On Fri, 29 Mar 1996 10:04:56 -0500 (EST) Tim Bass wrote:
Do we need a real-time protocol that is highly reliable in the world? The answer, is of course YES. Will a datagram service ever provide the .99999++++ delivery service required by distributed, network based real-time systems? Maybe. But IP based solutions alone will more-than-likely not solve the problem.
I see no "of course." Are there some applications which require this level of service in a WAN? Probably. Are there many? Probably not. Is end-to-end relability and performance more important for the *vast* majority of applications? Yes! I worked on IP over ATM back in 1992-1993 and checked out of the discussion at that time to move on to greener pastures. The preliminary facts said that ATM would be a poor transport for IP. After all these years, ATM still stinks. It still was designed for a set of applications of decreasing significance (i.e. voice traffic). Then people said: "wide spread ATM deployment is 4-5 years in the future." Well, we are 4-5 years in the future now and they still say the same thing. Every day the Internet grows, the likelihood that ATM as a WAN architecture will be successful fades. The only way it was ever going to be successful is if the powerful RBOCs forced it down people's throats. Their ability to do that is weakening as we speak. fletcher